Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Quantez (Universal, 1957)

Not everyone thought Fred MacMurray the
greatest Western star but, you know, in Quantez,
his seventh of eleven oaters (depending on your definition of a Western) he is
absolutely superb.

The movie itself is good without being
great. It was a rather typical Universal offering of the 1950s, which had some
good cinematography of attractive Western locations, workmanlike directors and
writers, and quality acting of a slightly sub-stellar kind. Universal didn’t
have the wealth of MGM, Paramount or Warners but they did produce solid
‘smaller’ pictures, and this is one.

Quantez was directed by Harry Keller (left), who had been an editor at Republic
for years (he worked on the delightful John Wayne picture Angel and the Badman), doing B-Westerns and noirs, before
graduating to directing Allan Lane oaters in 1951. Quantez was his first Western for Universal, and the following year
he would direct another one with Fred, Day of the Badman, which was rather good.

The chief weakness of Quantez is that although we get some nice and typical Universal
out-of-doors shots at the start and end (Sonoita and Coronado, AZ locations) the
majority of the picture is done on unconvincing studio sound stages. In many
ways the small cast (really, it’s just five outlaws and a visiting drifter) and
the intense interaction between them, as well as the studio settings, combine
to make it a stage play, more suitable to the theater. The CinemaScope was
wasted. Fortunately, the writing and acting is good enough to carry it off.
Often, Westerns that have limited action and outdoors settings and are very
talky are pretty weak. In fact The New
York Times review of the time said, “Very little
happens, and what does happen, mostly snarling conversation, could hardly be
duller. In an era when even the poorest Westerns manage to vibrate with flying
hoofs, bullets and arrows, this one remains static, turgid claptrap.” That was
too unkind. This Westerngets away with it. It is tense and
powerful.

We open to dramatic Herman Stein music
as five riders cross a desert. We soon discover they are outlaws being pursued
by a posse. They are led by sneering tough-guy Heller (John Larch). Gentry (Fred)
is a shrewd and canny number two. And we have Teach, a young gunman (John
Gavin) and El Gato (Sydney Chaplin), a ‘man who knows Indians’. And there is the
gorgeous Dorothy Malone as Chaney, Heller’s woman. They avoid the posse and
take refuge in Quantez, a dusty border village which is strangely deserted (not
the first time this has happened in Westerns, eh, e-pards?)

They arrive in Quantez

Right away Larch has gloated over
shooting down a man in the robbery and Fred has said that there was “no need to
kill him”. Fred is also gallant to Dorothy and cares for the horses (rather
like Robert Ryan in The Professionals)
so we know he’s a classic good badman, in the William S Hart tradition (though
more gritty and modern). And indeed, this is the persona he develops when they
are holed up in the ghost town. MacMurray handled it with consummate skill.
Unshaven, taciturn, good with a gun, he is totally convincing as a badman, yet he
clearly has good-guy qualities. And indeed he proves finally heroic.

John Larch (right) was rarely better (maybe as Dirty Harry’schief of police). Usually a policeman, soldier, attorney or
politician on TV, Larch had a good line in Western TV shows and big-screen Bs,
starting with a small part in a Bill Elliott oater in 1954, then bad guy Bodeen
in Seven Men from Now (and by the
way, men with –een names are invariably
baddies in Westerns), Man from Del Rio,
and, in 1957, a small part in another Fred Western, Gun for a Coward. His craggy face and bulbous nose are instantly
recognizable. If anything, in Quantez,
he is too bad, and the writing and
direction should really have moderated the badness a little. Westerns which
have good guys with weaknesses and bad ones with saving graces are always
better. But he’s pretty damn objectionable as the gang leader and we are happy
when he gets his just deserts.

As for Ms. Malone, I think I am in love
with her still. Oscared and Golden Globed as she was, I couldn’t care less
about Peyton Place, I just think of her
losing out to Anthony Quinn as Henry Fonda’s amour in Warlock, being Jeff Chandler’s amour in Pillars of the Sky, hovering between Rock and Kirk in The Last Sunset, dallying with Randy in The Nevadan, being ‘the other woman’ in Colorado Territory, and being John
Lund’s squeeze in Five Guns West
(same writer as Gun for a Coward).
She also played opposite Fred, of course, in his last Western, the
disappointing The Oregon Trail in
1959. Anyway, she was fab. And here, she is in many ways the central character.
All the gang fancy her (and she flirts with them all in her attempt to escape).
She is frightened, vulnerable, yet gutsy. It’s a great performance.

La Malone

El Gato turns out to be a double agent
(spoiler alert, oops, too late) because though white, he grew up with Cochise’s
Apaches and hates the white eyes. Ironically, the Apache he betrays his fellow
gang members to is Cochise – well, it’s Michael Ansara anyway, who was Cochise
in the 1956 – 60 ABC serialization of Broken
Arrow. It doesn’t so El Gato any good, though. He falls, pierced by an
Apache arrow. (Oops. Again.)

Ansara is an Apache but not Cochise

The fight in the horse waterhole is
pretty good and there’s a pianola (I do like Victorian gadgets in Westerns).

When Puritan, a wandering minstrel,
appears (James Barton) we get La Malone at her sexiest, for he is also a
portrait painter and she sits for him in a red décolleté plongeant. But I guess you have to be a man. Anyway, more
importantly for the plot, he sings a song of one John Coventry, gunfighter
extraordinaire, and it pretty well immediately becomes apparent that Fred’s
character ‘Gentry’ is really this Coventry. He is on the run from gunslinging
and has vowed never to kill anyone again. Ah, but will he keep his vow? For
there is bound to be a Larch/MacMurray showdown in the final reel...

The minstrel arrives

It’s all exciting stuff.

No, it is, actually, within the limits
of 1950s Universal B-Westerns.

The ending symmetrically mirrors the
opening, when the (surviving) gang members gallop out pursued by Indians, just
as they had galloped in being pursued by the posse. Finally, Fred…

On the set

No, that would be a spoiler too far.

Good Western, though, despite the
limitations, and MacMurray was rarely better.

2 comments:

I thoroughly concur with your excellent review, Jeff.I personally have a bit of a problem with westerns that trap the characters on a sound stage set for much of the picture, often resulting in too much talk and too little movement. But of those movies I think "QUANTEZ" manages to succeed the most.Malone is wonderful of course and Fred was indeed terrific in his role here. I found him a very good westerner more times than not (by a long way).A recommended watch.

Yup.The best 'studio' Westerns were those like High Noon or The Gunfighter which were really urban psycho-dramas which built tension to breaking point.But most Westerns need the great outdoors - as John Ford knew (except he forgot it in Liberty Valance).Jeff